Well, there’s no weddings in a time of covid and at this stage sitting on my hands is absolutely fucking dull. Pardon my French. Plus I’m DIY shy, I mean I’m abslutely rubbish at it. So my better half, she looks after all that. But a good supervisor I am!
Generally, by this stage in early May, I’m starting to knuckle down and the weddings which start off slowly start to snowball. In May of 2019 for example, just a short year ago, I photographed 11 weddings. And I took in a fair amout of counties in that time criss crossing the island. But it was wonderful. The style of work demands that I travel. And getting to see much of the country and different people is certainly a perk of this job. In the almsot sixteen years of doing this I have more or less seen most of the country.
Except Cavan. But sure, some day perhaps… Or maybe not, we’ll see.
At the end of last year I was thinking that it would be nice to have had a break. The past two years were excepionally busy. Though I tend to take a month off during the summer for family holidays and stuff like that. Quite often it’s July. And even then I’ll squeeze a wedding in at the start of that month and another toward the end if I can. But at the start of this year, I was thinking that an extended break would be welcome.
Once all editing was complete I felt a few months away would be good. To recharge the batteries. To reflect on the past year’s work, update the website, and to think about life and work in the future. Though the style of work is a reactive one, an instinctive one, thinking about that can be rather pointless. But some time away would have been nice to even just do nothing.
I thought that would be great.
Of course be careful what you wish for.
I’m bored shitless right now.
Right now the entire country has come to a halt. What am I saying? The bloody world is at a standtill! But let’s narrow it down to my own industry. Everybody is being affected right now. Many great videographers I work with have had to stop. And a few clownish ones too I suppose. Hair, make up, venues. The entire machine has come to a halt. And it must be tough on clients having to arrange and re-arrange their bookings with all suppliers.
If it is one thing that many of us say it’s “Didn’t the year fly by?” Or “wasn’t that a short year?” And so will be the case with this.
I miss the banter with those I work with on a regular basis. I miss complaining when my directions take me down a wrong turn. I miss the laughs and the uniqueness that each wedding will bring, the familiar faces I work with, and the new faces of clients, and how they put their trust in me, all of us, to do a great job.
But we’ll be back. We’ll all be back and with a renewed enthusism and hunger. The anecdote during the banking crisis was that the wedding industry held things together. Kept it going. There was a level of truth to that. And once we get going again, it’s this industry that will do the same thing again.
